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A 2017 paper, when originally published, had a fairly clear message: People who got the flu vaccine every year were no less protected than someone who had skipped last year’s dose. But now that it’s been retracted, the picture is somewhat less clear.

The retraction notice in BMC Medicine doesn’t provide much information — it simply says the authors included and omitted some information that affects the conclusions.

Last author Bryna Warshawsky, the medical director of communicable diseases at Public Health Ontario in Canada, provided some additional explanation to Retraction Watch — namely, that after addressing errors in the analysis, the researchers found that there were actually slight differences; specifically, for some strains of the flu, the new analysis suggests that the flu shot was slightly more effective in people who’d skipped last year’s dose.

Warshawsky told Retraction Watch she and her team have submitted the corrected paper to the journal, and the bottom line message stays the same:

Continue reading Authors retract paper on effects of skipping the flu vaccine

A journal has retracted a 2016 article for a litany of flaws, including plagiarism and a massive self-inflicted wound that should have obviated the first offense.  

According to the notice in Cardiology Research and Practice (a Hindawi title) for the paper, which compared two methods of threading a catheter into the heart’s arteries:

Continue reading Hello, reviewers? How did a study manage to say it was randomized, but also that it wasn’t?

Evelyne Decullier & Hervé Maisonneuve have been studying retractions for a long time. They’ve looked at how long retractions take to show up in PubMed, and five years ago they published a paper on the quality of retraction notices — and how well they were disseminated — in 2008. Now, they’ve repeated that analysis for papers retracted in 2016, and in a new paper in BMC Research Notes, conclude that “management of retraction has improved.” We asked them some questions — one of which, about an Elsevier policy, as noted below, led to a re-examination of the conclusions — about their findings:

Retraction Watch (RW): Why do you think it’s important for journals to provide a reason for retraction?

Evelyne Decullier & Hervé Maisonneuve (ED and HM): Correcting the literature is key for ensuring the quality of data and that the scientific method is respected. Readers should at least be able to differentiate retractions for honest errors from retractions for fraud or plagiarism.

Their confidence in the authors’ integrity is linked to the kind of retraction. We insist on the importance of the reader knowing whether the data, and which data, are valid. Continue reading Have retraction notices improved over time?

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured, unfortunately, a likely DDOS attack that kept our site dark for much of Tuesday and Wednesday. That means you may have missed this post, about the temporary withdrawal of a paper about a controversial “abortion reversal” method. But the week also featured the retraction of a paper about the Shroud of Turin, a researcher who lost a PhD despite the lack of any misconduct, and a new look at a study of whether spouses were more likely to cheat if their partners earned more than they did. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: “Chronic compulsive writing syndrome;” a new way to respond to rejection; rewards for a center that doesn’t yet exist

Is open peer review the future? The EMBO Journal has offered it since 2009. eLife offers it. They’re not alone, although they’re still in the minority (a fact Irene Hames wishes would change). Elsevier, one of the world’s largest publishers, has tried a pilot of it, too, so we thought it would be worth finding out what happened. We spoke to Bahar Mehmani, Elsevier’s lead for reviewer experience, about the project, and lessons learned.

Retraction Watch (RW): Why did Elsevier decide to launch a pilot of open peer review, and why with these five journals? Continue reading What happened when Elsevier tried open peer review? And which field says “no, thanks?”

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a critic with more than two dozen retractions; why twenty journals were punished; and why 35,000 papers may be eligible for retraction. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: The fall of a Crossfit science watchdog; a CDC retraction about suicides; “superb subterfuge” by predatory journals

As many readers know, even after a paper’s retracted, it will continue to be cited — often by researchers who don’t realize the findings are problematic. But when, and in what context, do those citations occur? In a recent paper in Scientometrics, Judit Bar-Ilan of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and Gali Halevi at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York examine what happened to nearly 1,000 retracted papers over time, including how long it took to pull them, and when and how often they continue to be cited. We spoke with Bar-Ilan and Halevi about what worries them about their findings — and why they believe Elsevier could help fix the problem.

Retraction Watch: As you note, there have been a number of studies of retractions. What do you hope this study contributes?

Continue reading Retracted papers keep being cited as if they weren’t retracted. Two researchers suggest how Elsevier could help fix that.

If scientific publishing were the World Cup, twenty scientific journals are being effectively taken out of competition today. And five others are being given a stern first-time warning.

Every year, Clarivate Analytics, a company that indexes more than 11,000 journals — and which, in turn, designates their powerful, but controversial, Impact Factors and rankings, based on citation rates — issues an annual report, noting how journals’ metrics changed, and which ones showed worrisome behavior that might be an attempt to game the system, such as citing themselves too frequently. And this year is no different: In this year’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR), Clarivate is stripping 20 journals of their Impact Factors by suppressing them from the rankings. Continue reading High-profile indexing service punishes 20 journals, issues unusual warning about five others